Teacher Fired for Refusing to Follow Transgender Pronoun Policy Can Sue School, Court Rules
The Indiana music teacher’s case has been sent back to the trial court to determine whether allowing him to simply call students by their last names caused “harm.”
An Indiana music teacher fired for refusing to follow his school’s transgender pronoun policy will have his day in court—again—a divided federal appeals panel has ruled.
Because important facts remained in dispute as to whether accommodating the teacher’s religion undermined the school’s educational mission, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit sent the case back to the trial court for a second time in the prolonged legal battle, reviving his religious rights claim.
The teacher, John Kluge, is an evangelical Christian who objected to addressing transgender students by their preferred names and pronouns on religious grounds. So the school accommodated him by allowing him to call all his students by their last names, “like a sports coach,” to avoid singling anyone out.
However, the school later revoked the accommodation after students complained they were “offended” by being called by their last name, forcing him to resign in 2018. In 2019, Kluge sued the school in federal district court for failing to accommodate his religion under Title VII.
After years of litigation in which most of Kluge’s claims against the school were denied, the Seventh Circuit sent his case back to the district court to reconsider his religious accommodation claim in light of new Supreme Court precedent.
Once again, the district court rejected his claims, finding he had caused “substantial student harm” by refusing to follow the school’s transgender policy. Kluge appealed last year, this time backed by 17 states, as we reported here.
On Monday, the federal appeals court reversed the district court’s denial of Kluge’s religious accommodation claim.
Under Title VII, the school was required to accommodate Kluge’s religious practices unless doing so would impose an “undue hardship” on its mission of “fostering a safe, inclusive learning environment for all.” The school argued the last-name-only accommodation hindered its mission by “causing student harm.”
Looking at the record, however, the facts did not support the school’s claim.
From the appeals court ruling:
The record does not conclusively show that any student’s safety was in jeopardy. There were no allegations of threatened physical harm or verbal abuse. The only evidence from students centers on their discomfort. Specifically, that the accommodation made them feel “alienated, upset, and dehumanized,” and “made the classroom environment very awkward.” … [T]wo students felt “emotional distress and harm.”
There was insufficient evidence to conclude that calling students by their last names, without more, would inflict emotional harm so as to place an “undue hardship” on the school’s purported mission. “Whether the accommodation caused the harm is unclear at this point in the litigation,” the court stated. “The only fact the parties agree on is that Kluge called students by their last names. There is conflicting evidence whether that act in isolation caused the alleged emotional distress.”
That question and others will now go back to the district judge and jury, with the federal appeals court having made clear that the legal standard requires proof of facts, not just feelings.
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Comments
Call them 1st Chair Trumpet. 3rd Chair Clarinet. etc.
Naw, call them boy or girl according to their birth certificate.
Since when is ANYONE legally obligated to avoid causing others, even children, “distress”? I would say that the First Amendment says exactly the opposite.
Using last names as a form of address in a classroom? That is not distress. Popping a balloon next to a sleeping baby om the other hand…
Once upon a time using last names was the norm in classrooms.
I had a teacher who called me and my sister just part of our last name. He addressed a classmate of my sister as “Q”.
The kids in the story would’ve been beside themselves with “distress”.
I couldn’t care less what you think you are. However I do care deeply about being forced to also believe you’re a donut today on pain if imprisonment.
JFK called himself a donut during. Speech in Germany so… whatever.
“Ich bin ein Berliner!”
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
George Orwell
Emotional distress is called high school. No school is required to alter its policies based on a couple of cupcakes whose feelings were bruised. I bet there were more than one student suffering “emotional harm” by getting browbeaten with the tranny stuff and forced to call boys girls and vice versa
Should not be legal to make people play along with someone’s denial of reality.
Variation: I am damned if I will “your honor” a judge when at, say, a party or dinner or some such. One of my high school classmates became a federal judge and was expecting this at our reunions. I wouldn’t do it when he demanded it. “You aren’t in court, [insert name here], so get off that high horse of yours.”
Or to cater to their psychoses. Arguably, using “preferred pronouns” is harmful to those who demand their use because compliance reinforces and exacerbates their mental health problems.
The people to blame are those who taught them to think this way. Is it time to ban public education?
Another idiotic transferring of the problem to religion, as if believing in a sky daddy should make you privileged in the eyes of the law.
Cum ulla sella in pugno taberna.
An Evangelical Christian brawling in a tavern? Surely not! Still
salus in arduis could apply.
Pretty sure it’s pugna. Pugno is a verb. Pugna is the required ablative of pugna.
Why, thank you. This makes Google Translate incrementally happier (“fist shop”) becomes (“fight shop”).
You three! Stop this! This instant!
I’m sorry, Sister.
I agree. The argument is weak. Effectively, he’s claiming offense (to his religious sensibilities) at being asked to use certain language. This is not much different from the offense felt by his students when he doesn’t use their “preferred” names. But nobody has a right to not be offended, particularly by long-used and very well-established use of the English language.
A much better argument is that the state has no authority to compel speech of any sort, period. He’s well-positioned to use this argument because government is his employer.
Not quite. Rather the demand is he deny reality and lie. There is no legal right to demand lies. Indeed perjury will get you into trouble. His religion requires respect for reality, and either exclusively, or near exclusively requires truth – there may be a grey zone when it comes to telling Gestapo if you’re hiding Jews inside.
I believe that is his argument. The State is attempting to compel speech which violates his freedom to practice his religion.
“scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim.”
I see you have not quite grasped it is the school assuming they have a privilege to command the teacher surrender his beliefs because their beliefs are superior to his. The argument that it is about “harm” to the students is sheer poppycock when you consider how much actual harm schools seem incapable of protecting students from. It is about silencing dissent and quashing wrong thought.
If it’s beliefs in a sky daddy, so what. Why the privilege? It has nothing to do with religion.
Good question. But I don’t want to be mistaken at what point you are making. Is it that he could have a legitimate case against the school without bringing religion into it? Or is it that his religious belief does not warrant an accommodation by the school?
His point is that a secular argument should be presented to a secular court. Doing anything else leads to a rabbit hole in which secular courts are forced to decide which are “real” religions and which are not. When this occurs, hardest hit will be me and my fellow communicants in the Church of Jeff Cooper of Satter-Day Plinkers, whose religion (like Sikhs) requires us to go armed at all times in all places.
I see you feel free to insult people. As you subscribe to the religious philosophy that holds the world’s record for murder and persecution of those that disagree with you, I’m not surprised. On the side, where in the constitution are your beliefs protected? As you claim atheism is not a religion, then freedom of religion does not apply to you.
Try reading the First Amendment, dickbreath. Religion IS privileged, in that government may not force you to break the tenets of your faith.
You are free to be faithless, as well, and no one can force you to be otherwise, no matter how badly that choice may work out for you.
Since when their record of religious persecution of others is called out, atheists claim exemption on the grounds that atheism is not a religion, then where in the constitution are their beliefs protected?
Whether framed as religious belief or conscience/personal beliefs either way person A doesn’t get to demand dogmatic adherence to linguistic desires from person B. Neither religious belief or personal conscience has an elevated position over the other; they are an equivalent basis to object.
We often see a strain of this sort of demand expressed as ‘tone policing’ where snowflakes interject with claims of harm from the manner and intensity of the message delivery v the substance of the message being delivered. ‘Oh you shouldn’t call Sally a slut or Harry a man whore when explaining the dangers of libertine promiscuity’. Real life doesn’t operate in a detached/clinical mode and it is past time to end weaponized cosplay/hurt feelings.
Certainly no worse than me believing I’m a female and demand you call me that.
It shouldn’t have been argued as a religious accommodation case anyway. Free speech is good enough as has been determined.
It’s called compelled speech.
At least belief “in a sky daddy” is supported as much by reason as it is by faith, and can’t be definitively disproved in any event. In contrast, your belief in a US Constitution that doesn’t privilege religion can be disproved in about 20 seconds.
IF you don’t like the first amendment, you are free to revoke your citizenship and move to China. By the way, I would feel the same if required to write a valentine’s day card (or and other holiday with “saint” in front of it. Would you like to be coerced to follow a religion? (On the side, where in the constitution is there freedom do be an atheist?)
Good for her
Actually, it seems like a perfectly reasonable and nondiscriminatory approach to respect his civil rights. To deny him his rights and claim harm from being treated equally seems much more unreasonable, especially as there is no right involved.
as long as lefty keeps getting our money
they will continue to rule america
maga!
There is nothing offensive about calling students by their last name. There is, however, a lot to find offensive about being forced to use incorrect pronouns.
The school’s first response letting the teacher call every student by their last name was reasonable and they should have stuck with that and told the offended to suck it up. I think this has more to do with a few students wanting to be special “look at me” than anything else
That and probably the Parents using their child to advance an ideological agenda.
The kids may be distressed because they’re mentally ill and are being enabled by the so-called adults in their lives. I’d bet that they enjoy harming this teacher and are being encouraged to do so by their shitty parents.
I really wish both sides of this argument would quit conflating ‘names’ and ‘pronouns.’ Whether a particular name has a gender and/or what that gender is is subjective. Pronouns are not. He/him/his are male, period. She/her/hers are female, period.
You do have a point. First names should have been OK also.
It’s a good thing English no longer has different pronouns for the second person. In Hebrew “you” takes both number and gender. (This is why Bible English uses “thou”.)